Wednesday, September 22, 2010

"According to Imam Al-Ghazali, a child is like an uncut diamond." The parent's responsibility is to cut, shape, and polish their child's soul until it becomes a shining beautiful jewel, pleasing to the eye of Allah. Clearly, it is the parents who determine whether their children will become of fine character or not.

Every parent wishes to raise their children to become noble souls, good in every way; but, many do not know how to achieve that goal in an effective manner.
There are two primary requirements:

1- Parents have to know how a child's character or personality is developed.
2- Parents must themselves possess right values that will act as the basis for shaping their children's character; these right values are the traditional values of Islamic Character, and children must be raised to understand their role as Representative of Allah in this world (Khalifah Allah).

By combining these two necessary aspects of character development, parents will be able to shape their children to be excellent individuals in this world and the next.

You can get help from an online ebook which can be freely read online.

'Shaping Excellent Character- A manual for parents'

This book is from "Islamic World.net and book is an effort from "Women's club, University Kebangsaan, Kuala Lumper, Malaysia"

Summary of the book says:
* It is best to shape your children good character from an early age, but it is still not too late to correct the character of children of any age group.

* Children should be encouraged to be well behaved through directed positive influence. Reward them immediately when they do good. Gently admonish them immediately when they do wrong. Explain to them what they have done wrong, and clarify why it should not be repeated.

* Children need to be educated to observe certain limits in their freedom of action, and these are the limits that have been clearly set out for us by Allah when he gave us Islam as our perfect plan for a right life.

* We need to be consistent in encouraging positive values at every time and in every place.

* The application of Islamic values in raising our children is the best way to encourage the development of positive character.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Here is the beginning of my post.
'Kids Konnect' is one of those free sites which can be called educational and entertaining as the same time or edutainment site. It is a valuable link for kids and parents to start searching the net in a safe way as they offer the links and sites which are most appropriate to be displayed on a Web site intended for children
It was first created to fulfill the requirements of a model technology school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. But later when this site went upto the internet, it was decided to make this site available free worldwide.
Site was created by a retired teacher "Jan Belzer" having a long teaching experience.

Primary goal:
To find the best sites available and provide the students with the safest and most effective way of utilizing the Internet. And here is the rest of it.

The main goal behind creating the site can be divided into 4 parts:

- Allowing children to safely and effectively utilize the Internet.
- Site covers the curriculm areas taught in school, so site is also helpful in studies.
- Lots of fun site links for kids to visit.
- Keeping the site free.

Target:

For teachers, students, and parents who utilize KidsKonnect at school and at home.

Achievement: Kids Konnect receives 280,000 unique visitors each month, with an average of 700,000 pages viewed monthly with 2 pages per visit. It has over 413 pages right now, adding more pages whenever needed.
There is very impressive and informative report about internet safety from the Kids Konnect.com. I have taken a part of the article which is about "important facts to think about"

1. In a study of 4 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 who use the Internet, 29% indicated they would give out their home address and 14% would give out their email address if asked (NOP Research Group, 2002).

2. 81% of parents of online teens say that teens aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online and 79% of online teens agree with this (Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 17, 2005).

3. Approximately 89% of sexual solicitations of youth were made in either chat rooms or through Instant Messaging (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 2001).

4. 1 in 5 youth ages 10 to 17 received sexual solicitation or approach in last year (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000).

5. “30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7% told their parent because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

6. "86% of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents’ e-mail, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

7. Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment (Dateline, 2006).

8. 42% of parents do not review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via instant messaging (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

9. 95% of parents didn’t recognize common chat room lingo that teenagers use to let people they’re chatting with know that their parents are watching. Those phrases are POS (parent over shoulder), P911 (parent alert), BRB (be right back), LOL (laughing out loud) and A/S/L (age/sex/location) (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

10. 30% of parents allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office. Parents say they are more vigilant about where their teen(s) go online if the computer is in a public area of the household (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

11. Nearly three out of 10 (28%) of parents don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

12. One-third of youth ages 8-18 have talked about meeting someone they have only met through the Internet (Polly Klaas Foundation, December 21, 2005).